


This is how it's done.

by Pandesme



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Background Het, F/M, Family, Family Secrets, Fluff and Smut, Gen, M/M, Slash, Slow Build, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 13:04:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandesme/pseuds/Pandesme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contrary to popular belief Tony Stark does in fact know how to keep a secret. But now he's part of a team, and it is getting harder to keep his secret. And then there is Captain America, and Tony's suddenly having a sexual identity crisis. Which is just wrong, on so many levels. Not because of the suddenly being attracted to a man thing (which yeah, weird, but he can accept that) but because of the fact that Steve is young. Too young. As in Steve is only twenty three, the same age as his son. Not that Steve would know it, since his son is the secret Tony has been keeping all these years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is how it's done.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Slash. Past mentions of abuse. Violence. Drinking. And a bunch of other things that I am probably forgetting. 
> 
> Dislaimer: I do not own The Avengers, Iron Man, or anything else that you recognize. 
> 
> AN: Hey! So this is just the introduction. Its 3am here, so I'll say sorry now for any and all mistakes that you see. The first chapter is just meant to be set up, so you'll know the changes I've made and understand what is going on. The actual story will start in the next chapter, and it gets more interesting I promise! 
> 
> Also, don't let the idea of Tony having kids scare you off! Yes they are important to the story, but the main focus of the story will be Steve Rogers/Tony Stark romance.

Tony Stark was many things, and depending on whom you asked a lot of those things would not be very complimentary. However, if you asked Tony (which nobody ever did, although that never stopped him from telling them anyways) he’d probably tell you that yes, he was an asshole. You could say that he drank too much, slept around too much, that he was narcissistic, and that he “didn’t play well with others”. Tony would nod, smile, and proudly say that yes, he was all of those things. 

But he was also a fucking genius. And if there was one thing Tony knew how to do it was to hide in plain sight. He was a Stark after all, and one of the only useful things Howard had ever taught him was that the best way to keep a secret was to hide it in plain sight. Howard had perfected the technique, to live as publicly as possible so that nobody would think to look any deeper. If the world thought that they knew everything there was to know about you, then they would have no reason to delve deeper, into the things that really mattered. To keep the press from going and looking for a story all you had to do was give them one. 

And that’s what Tony had done, and what his mother and father had done before him. Nobody had known that the Starks weren’t the perfect family that they appeared to be. Nobody had suspected that Howard drank too much, that Maria had struggled heavily with depression, and that Tony had basically been raised by his nanny and the family butler Jarvis. Of course, Tony has taken his father’s philosophy and expanded it, perfected it. Tony wasn’t a genius for nothing after all.

People usually underestimated just how much of a genius Tony really was. He had built his first circuit board at age four, had graduated high school and entered into college at age fourteen, and had built his first robot (complete with low level AI) at age eight. His mind worked at least twice as fast as most other geniuses. He was always ten, fifteen, twenty steps ahead. He was so far ahead of everyone else that he had been giving Stark Industries designs that he had thought of and perfected five years prior. He hadn’t needed SHEILD, or his father, to get him to create a new element. He’d already thought of it, figured it out, years prior. He’d just never had a reason to bother making it until he’d been dying of palladium poisoning. 

He’d let SHEILD believe that they had given him the push, let them believe that he had needed those files of his father’s in order to do it. He’d known about Natasha from the beginning, known about SHEILD, and he’d only let her discover what he wanted her to discover. He’d given her the same side that he gave the press, and she’d believed it just like he had known she would. After all, if he could hide his secrets from Pepper so completely that she didn’t even suspect the him having any then Natasha had stood a chance, super-spy or not. He was more than just a genius; he was quite possibly one of the smartest men in the world. Possibly even the smartest man in the world. Quite simply, if he didn’t want you to know something then you wouldn’t. He could figure you out in minutes, and know exactly what to say and how to outmaneuver you. 

But why bother? Well, because like most people Tony Stark had secrets. Small secrets, like being able to knit, and big secrets. Secrets so big, so important that he’d do anything to keep them. It had all started the year his parents had died. He’d been young, reckless, and drunk. Like most young people, he’d thought himself invincible. He was a genius, nothing could touch him. Well, nothing except forgetting to use a condom. It had been one of his many one night stands in the weeks after his parents had died, and he’d been drunk. Too drunk. 

It turns out that even geniuses make mistakes when they are that drunk. A few weeks later the woman had come back, telling him that she was pregnant. He hadn’t believed her at first, he could barely even remember her. The DNA test had confirmed it, and Tony was officially screwed. He hadn’t taken it well, and had gone on a two month long bender. Obie had made the woman sign a contract that would prevent her from telling anyone who the father was, in return for a generous sum of money of course. And that had been that. 

At least that had been that until the baby had been born. At age twenty Tony Stark officially became a father. He hadn’t visited, had preferred to bury his head in the sand. A week later the woman had died of a brain aneurism, and suddenly Tony had a choice to make. Take the child and raise it, or not. He hadn’t exactly been sure what “not” would entail, what it would mean. What he had known was that “not” would make him an even worse father then Howard had been.

So a week after his son had been born Tony finally met him. The nurse, caregiver, or whoever she was that had been looking after the baby, had handed the baby over to Tony and he’d never been so fucking terrified in his life. But as soon as he held the baby, his son, he’d been overcome with an intense all-encompassing feeling, unlike anything he had ever felt before. He realized later that it had been love that he was feeling, and he knew in that moment that he wouldn’t be able to do “not”. 

But he also knew what it was like to grow up in the spotlight, and how dangerous it would be for his son. Even at the age of twenty Tony had enemies, and Tony himself had been kidnapped enough times as a child to know that it was a real possibility. He didn’t want that for his son. But Tony wasn’t a genius for nothing. Everyone that already knew about his son’s existence was made to sign contracts forcing them to stay silent. He moved, left the mansion he grew up in and bought one in Malibu. Jarvis and his old nanny Nina had stayed on his parent’s payroll even after Tony had left for boarding school, and later college. There weren’t many people that Tony trusted in the world, but Jarvis and Nina had raised him. He loved them more then he’d loved his real parents, and they were the first ones he went to for help. 

So they had made the move to Malibu with him. Obie had encouraged it, and had made things easier by taking on more responsibility and power within Stark Industries. Tony realized now that the only reason Obie had helped, had encouraged it, was because of the extra power it gave him over the company. It hadn’t been easy at first, but Tony had grown up in a family that knew exactly how to keep the world from seeing what you didn’t want them to see. So he gave them what they wanted, what they expected. He went out periodically, got drunk and partied for the cameras. He gave them a story, always made sure they had something to occupy themselves with.

Nobody suspected a thing. Tony wasn’t a perfect dad; he was young and made plenty of mistakes. But he was a hell of a lot better than his father had been. When Luke turned four Tony had to enroll him in preschool. Obviously he couldn’t enroll him under the name Stark, so he’d enrolled him as Luke Carter. Nina always picked him up and dropped him off, and again nobody had caught on. Tony wasn’t able to be around as much as he wanted, even with Obie taking on a majority of the responsibility of running Stark Industries there was a lot that Tony had to see to himself. Add in that Tony had to constantly put on a show for the tabloids, and actually invent things (not that that was hard at all), he still spent more time away from Luke then he wanted to. Of course Tony was there for his son ten times more than Howard had been for him, but that really wasn’t saying much.

When Luke turned seven Jarvis passed away. In his grief, which far surpassed anything he had felt at the death of his parents, he had made another mistake. This one resulting in a girl. Tony was twenty seven now, and more mature then he had been at twenty when Luke was born. It had taken him a while, but he’d gotten the hang of being a good father. 

He made fewer mistakes now than he did before, he was around more often, and never missed a school function that Luke had. (Contrary to popular belief he was capable of being discreet and ensuring that he wasn’t recognized.) But when Gwen was born things were different. Gwen’s mom hadn’t died, like Luke’s had. She also was a fucking bitch. She wanted money, and eventually she had signed over full custody of Gwen to Tony in exchange for a large sum of money. Tony had never been so disgusted in his life; he couldn’t fathom selling his daughter. He’d made sure the woman would never be able to come near them again. 

It was harder now; he had two secrets to keep. But Tony was a genius, and always ten steps ahead of everyone else. He’d ended up hiring an executive assistant that year, Pepper Potts. It allowed him more time to be with his kids. He kept up appearances in the press, Pepper took care of the majority of his work at SI, and Obie did the rest. It was easy to keep Luke and Gwen a secret from Pepper. For one, she was never allowed to step foot in his Malibu home, nobody was except for Nina, Obie, and himself. It was easy to explain his many disappearances, he just let her assume he was off somewhere gambling, drinking, or generally sleeping around. 

It was easy, easier than it should have been. Nobody thought to look deeper; nobody suspected he was hiding anything. And why would they? Nobody would look at him and think, hey maybe Tony Stark is hiding the fact that he had children. The very idea would be absurd, laughable. Then everything had changed. Tony had been kidnapped, and almost killed by his own bomb. The only reason Tony had survived Afghanistan, the only reason he had pushed himself to survive, to escape, was to see his kids again. So he’d built Iron Man. 

Then he’d discovered Obie’s betrayal, and he’d never felt so scared in his life. Obie’s betrayal was worse than Afghanistan had been, because Obie knew. Obie knew everything about Luke and Gwen. And Tony knew that Obie would not be above using them to get to him, which was exactly what Tony had been trying to protect them from by keeping them a secret in the first place. All Tony had felt upon killing Obie was relief. It had strengthened his resolve, he trusted Pepper, but he had also trusted Obie and look where that had gotten him. So he continued to keep Luke and Gwen a secret from Pepper, and from Rhodey.

Things got more complicated when SHEILD got involved. Tony had known they would get involved. They weren’t as secret as they would like to believe. But he played dumb, out on the show that they had been expecting to see, and they had fallen for it. He wasn’t a genius for nothing after all. He’d made sure that they didn’t have access to the Malibu house, he’d had another house in LA that he frequented when he was playing up for the press, and he’d made sure that that was where they had access to him. It had been a mess, and with Nina being the only one besides himself that knew about Luke and Gwen (as well as JARVIS the AI, that he had built after the real Jarvis died) it was harder than it had been back when he he’d had Jarvis as well, and Obie (even though that trust had been severely misplaced.).

Pepper tried to start a relationship with Tony, and he’d had to gently make her realize that it would never happen. It wouldn’t have been fair to her, and when (because he wasn’t unrealistic, he knew that one day everyone would have to find out about Gwen and Luke) she found out just how much he’d kept from her she would be furious. Then the Avengers had happened. Once they’d saved New York they had gone their separate ways for a while, before reuniting and working together properly as a team. 

That was when Tony knew that his secret was going to be found out sooner rather than later. One by one the Avengers moved into his tower in New York, and it was getting harder to explain his long absences. Luke was twenty three now, and Gwen was sixteen. They were older, and while he’d prefer to keep them a secret at least until Gwen was of age he knew that that probably wasn’t going to happen. He’d never before had so many people in his “inner circle” so to speak. He kept his distance from the other Avengers, remained as aloof and distant as possible. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to carry on like this much longer. He was getting more press than ever before (which really was saying something) due to being Tony Stark, Iron Man, and now an Avenger and savior of New York as well. Between the extra press, Pepper, Rhodey, SHEILD, Stark Industries, and now the Avengers he knew that he’d be discovered sooner rather than later.


End file.
